I understand the severity of peanut/nut allergies but there are several different food allergies that need to be recognized and educated about. I would like to know if anyone is or knows someone who has a severe allergy to eggs?

We do not allow her to visit most bakeries because of the dried egg powder that many use. As an infant she had facial swelling after visiting a local bakery. I wasn't going to allow her to eat any of the bread but I bought a loaf for my husband and I (she was just 18-20 months old).

My youngest is severely allergic to dairy, peanuts, and egg. I will be honest - dairy is our major worry, most likely because it is more prevalent in schools and also because I've witnessed two scary reactions of his to dairy.

I would check out the egg allergy forum as well - you will find egg allergy info there too.

My son is severely anaphylactic to egg - his rast score simply read >100. He is 3 1/2 and has had two severe reactions that resulted in emergency room visits from exposure to egg. The last exposure was a nibble of a candy from a bakery that the staff and the baker assured my parents was absolutely egg-fee. Not so, as we discovered with his immediate reaction and confirmed the following week when my parents returned to the bakery. Needless to say, that was the last item he has ever consumed from a bakery.

I am currently preparing my son's school for his arrival in JK this September. They have been very accommodating and have allowed me to present at a PD day to all the staff and teachers. The focus of my presentation was "peanuts are not the only food that can cause life-threatening reactions". They were a little freaked out with the list of severe allergies my son has (peanut, treenut, dairy, egg and fish are the worst), but are very willing to try to accommodate as best as they can - the school is already peanut and tree-nut free.

I just joined the parent association at the school and intend to be on every field trip and at every event that involves food. I will also be providing information packages to all staff and will be doing more presentations to both the staff and hopefully the parents as well. I am still very nervous about this, but am fortunate that it is a small school and I have been able to request that my son be placed in the JK class with the fewest number of students. I should mention that this is a private school, so the class sizes are very small (8-14 students) which helps keep my anxiety level down.

Hi Fiona - great idea asking for time on a PD day... I am going through the JK angst as my daughter will start in September
Would you be willing to share the presentation materials you made? (and any feedback from the school?)

Although the main content of the presentation is only about 6 slides, presenting took approximately half and hour and I received a lot of very good questions for another 30 minutes - so budget at least an hour. My daughter already attends the school, so the staff invited me to speak a full year before my son starts so that they could start to think about how they will manage next September.

There is however one question that I received at the presentation that I haven't been able to answer. So please reply if you have any ideas: Is there a risk that my kindergarten son or another child could take the epi-pen out to play with and accidently inject someone in the finger or somewhere else?

From what I understand, epinephrene is a vaso-constrictor. If you injected into your finger, it would hurt an awful lot. It is a concernthat you could lose the finger due to lack of circulation. If a healthy person is injected in the normal spot, it will do them no harm. This is why the saying goes, give the Epi-Pen...you won't hurt the person and you just might save their life.

I have never heard of students actually injecting themsilves. I suspect that there are much more interesting things to play with.

The belt has a large piece of velcro that would need to be opened and the cap needs to be removed. For our daughter who has difficulty opening her lunch containers, it was never a worry. I would expect some supervision from the teacher so I have no worries.

If it is a real concern, you could bring in a trainer to show the class and to remove their curiosity.

Thanks Susan. My son is starting to get the message that the epi-pen is not a toy, but occasionally he will open his eBelt to look at it. He is only 3 and a 1/2, but he has no trouble opening it, just some trouble lining up the eBelt cap to close it.

He will start wearing it everyday at his daycare starting next week, so I am hoping this will drive the message home as they have a very good staff-child ratio to monitor the kids.

I would definitely get a trainer (or two) so that he can play and practice with it to his heart's content. And I would pretty much tell him and all his friends to never play with the real one - it's not a toy, it is a tool that contains medicine that can help him if he needs it.

Just add it to your list of rules and enforce it when necessary.

My kids started wearing theirs when they were 3-4 and we did not have a problem with them playing with it. I have only heard one anecdote of a child accidentally injecting themselves with an EpiPen, and I believe that was one they found in a diaper bag ...

The odd time when my son took it out to show to others (when he was older, around 8 years), I told him that it was best left in the EBelt and to use a trainer to do demonstrations.

Susan is right, though - you can do serious damage by injecting the hand or foot, and could even lose a digit. So if anyone ever injects themselves there by accident, get to an ER pronto.

When my son was three he "gave" it to our wall unit to see what would happen. (He also touched hot stoves, and rode plastic lids down the basement stairs, and satisfied his curiosities in a bunch of ways that made me crazy! - That is just the kind of kid he is.) But that satisfied him, and he has never had another incident in the 8 years since them. He's never used it inappropriately, and never thought of it as a weapon, or had anyone else think of it that way. He did that before he started wearing it and being responsible for it, and once we sat him down and explained it, he was fine. He has worn it since kindergarten (5 years).

I would also use an expired one and show your child how it works. I use an upside-down paper cup (the waxed ones worked really well) rather than an orange, so you can see how much fluid comes out, and how little pressure is needed to activate it. It is a very small amount of fluid, and the pressure doesn't even make a dent in the cup. This is important, because it really hurt when he has been given the epipen, and now he is a little phobic about it, but if I had known how little force was needed (8 pounds for Epipen, don't know what the measure is for Twinject), I wouldn't have hurt him. I worry that he will be too scared of getting the shot to tell people or do it right away, because he thinks it's going to hurt like the other times. Since he last had it, Epipen has changed the wording of their instructions from "jab" to "push".

aaronsmom,
Your son and my son sound like kindred spirits! My sons has ridden the laundry basket, flattened cardboard boxes and baby blankets down the stairs! I think he has been in the hospital for stitches, bumps and falls just as often as for his allergies and asthma!

He does have a trainer EpiPen which he loves to check out and try, but I have never thought of showing him the needle in the expired ones. My hubby and I have tried it out, but I was concerned that the size of the needle might freak him out - it is a pretty large, solid looking needle. We always talk really positively about how great the EpiPen is and how it can make you feel better when you get sick from allergies, so he views it very positively right now. The only time he has been given it was in hospital by a nurse or doctor and it was in a syringe form, not an auto-injector. I'll see how he does wearing his eBelt full-time over the next little while first and then address it that way if we need to.

It was the school who expressed some concern about other curious kids wanting to play with the EpiPen and possibly getting hurt and I couldn't respond to that question very confidently. Despite being a dare devil, my son can be shy and want to please other kids - especially older boys.

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